Jerome, A Poor Man eBook

When he reached home his wife, who had just finished
her game, slid out gently, and the usual festivities
began. Colonel Lamson, warmed with punch and
good-fellowship and tobacco, grew brilliant at cards,
and humorously reminiscent of old jokes between the
games; John Jennings lagged at cards, but flashed
out now and then with fine wit, while his fervently
working brain lit up his worn face with the light
of youth. The lawyer, who drank more than the
rest, played better and better, and waxed caustic
in speech if crossed. As for the Squire, his
frankness increased even to the risk of self-praise.
Before the evening was over he had told the whole
story of little Jerome, of Doctor Prescott and himself
and the Edwards mortgage. The three friends stared
at him with unsorted cards in their hands.

“You are a damned fool!” cried Eliphalet
Means, taking his pipe from his mouth.

“No,” cried Jennings, “not a damned
fool, but a rare fool,” and his great black
eyes, in their mournful hollows, flashed affectionately
at Squire Eben.

“And I say he’s a damned fool. Men
live in this world,” maintained the lawyer,
fiercely.

“Men’s hearts ought to be out of the world
if their heads are in it,” affirmed John Jennings,
with a beautiful smile. “I say he’s
a rare fool, and I would that all the wise men could
go to school to such a fool and learn wisdom of his
folly.”

Colonel Jack Lamson, who sat at the Squire’s
left, removed his pipe, cleared his throat, and strove
to speak in vain. Now he began with a queer stiffness
of his lips, while his purplish-red flush spread to
the roots of his thin bristle of gray hair.

“It reminds me of a story I heard. No,
that is another. It reminds me—­”
And then the colonel broke down with a great sob,
and a dash of his sleeve across his eyes, and recovered
himself, and cried out, chokingly, “No, I’ll
be damned if it reminds me of anything I’ve ever
seen or heard of, for I’ve never seen a man like
you, Eben!”

And with that he slapped his cards to the table, and
shook the Squire’s hand, with such a fury of
affectionate enthusiasm that some of his cards fluttered
about him to the floor, like a shower of leaves.

As for Eliphalet Means, he declared again, with vicious
emphasis, “He’s a damned fool!”
then rose up, laid his cards on top of the colonel’s
scattered hand, went to the punch-bowl and helped himself
to another glass; then, pipe in mouth, went up to Squire
Merritt and gave him a great slap on his back.
“You are a damned fool, my boy!” he cried
out, holding his pipe from his lips and breathing out
a great cloud of smoke with the words; “but
the wife and the young one and you shall never want
a bite or a sup, nor a bed nor a board, on account
of it, while old ’Liph Means has a penny in pocket.”

And with that Eliphalet Means, who was old enough
to be the Squire’s father, and loved him as
he would have loved a son, went back to his seat and
dealt the cards over.